My first thought was that this was a response to situations like that in Boston, where religious adoption agencies have more or less been put out of business because they prefer not to mediate adoptions by gay couples. The story says it’s about the service not being used enough to warrant the effort.

I believe that. I’m close to several young LDS couples who have adopted recently, both in and out of Utah, and not one worked through LDS Family Services. The usual reason given was that LDS Family Services had so few children to adopt that the waiting list was a decade long. It’s much less than that for other agencies, though it can still take years.

The Church has scaled back all its social services lately. Instead of having LDS counselors in our area, the Church has switched to contracting out to a firm of psychologists who now take referrals from local bishops. Instead of new Bishop’s storehouses, the Church is now contracting with local food pantries.

This is part of the trend that has been ongoing since the late territorial days.